Armenia Startup Academy is a pre-acceleration program, designed to guide tech startups and teams working on innovative ideas and products through the process of customer development using advanced tracking methodologies and instruments. Participants will attend weekly lectures on various topics and work on their go-to-market strategy and explore opportunities to enter foreign accelerators in their target markets.

We are looking for early-stage for-profit tech startups that have strong teams with complementary skills, scalability potential and want to acquire hands-on experience in all knowledge areas that are crucial for their growth, customer and product development.

The teams will be guided and coached to apply to global/regional accelerators and to build relevant partnerships for market validation. The work with teams will include tech, financial, legal, business development and customer development coaching and support.

The program consists of 3 modules. The first module, Startup Diagnostics. Some of the topics are Emotional Intelligence, Stress Management, Task Management, Resilience, Market Analysis & Metrics, Branding & Positioning and Engineering. The second module is Market Selection & Launch Strategy with related topics on Inbound & Outbound Marketing, Growth Hacking, Pricing and GTM Strategy. Incorporation, Term Sheets, Cap Tables & Stock Options, Sales Strategy & Sales Manual and Intellectual Property are some of the major topics of the third module, Preparation to Market Validation.

The program lasts 8 weeks cultivating into Demo Day, where startups introduce their solutions in front of the audience and investors.

The Pre-Acceleration Batch 8 starts at November 12.

Upon graduation, the teams will have a practical understanding of the market context for their products and strategic plan for the next 6 months. Moreover, they will have opportunity to build a network of professionals from around the world ready to assist them in any aspect.

Armenia Startup Academy decided to include gamification elements in the learning process of startups, which makes startups more enthusiastic about completing their tasks on time and achieving excellent results in a short period of time. The gamification criteria include attending the lectures, making market analysis, calculating TAM, SAM, SOM, conducting competitive analysis, finding OMTM and calculating relevant metrics. For appropriately completing the tasks, the startups are awarded badges, such as “Champ Startup”, “Everpresent Hero”, “Heroism” and others. The badges further can be converted into Hero Coins which provide startups to use additional services offered by Hero House. The winner of the gamification will be given an opportunity to stay in Silicon Valley for 5 weeks. The program is fully funded by SmartGateVC, initiators of Armenia Startup Academy.

Armenia Startup Academy is based in Hero House, a tech and entrepreneurship hub in the center of Yerevan.

Participation of startups is free of charge, the only thing needed is being a great team and having a great idea.